BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Friday, February 13, 2004
A non-sex non-scandal
non-story. There is only one story that the media and political
world is talking about right now: the allegations that Senator John
Kerry had an extramarital affair with a young woman a few years ago.
This "news" was broken yesterday by Matt
Drudge, who is best known
for revealing in 1998 that Newsweek was preparing a report on
the relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
What's perversely fascinating about
this is the post-modern nature of the current media environment.
Drudge's scoop obviously doesn't meet any sort of respectable news
standard. Not only are the allegations completely unproven, but it's
still unclear as to what the allegations even are.
Yet this is already getting picked
up by papers in the UK and in Australia, which have rather different
standards from those that prevail in the US (which are low enough as
it is). So you've got a story that everyone is talking about, that
has already broken the talk-radio barrier (Sean Hannity gushed over
Drudge yesterday, and Kerry denied the rumors, whatever they are, on
Imus this morning), but that is virtually absent from US newspapers
today.
The most specific version of the
story I've seen is this,
in the London Sun, home of the Page Three Girl. Assuming it's
accurate (a huge assumption!), the so-called scandal is even lamer
than one might have imagined. A 24-year-old woman's parents believe
that Kerry was coming on to their daughter. Reporter Brian Flynn
writes:
There is no evidence the
pair had an affair, but her father Terry, 56, said: "I think he's
a sleazeball. I did kind of wonder if my daughter didn't get that
kind of feeling herself.
"He's not the sort of guy I
would choose to be with my daughter."
This is a sex scandal? Don't you
need, you know, sex?
Joe
Conason has the definitive
(thus far) take. As for whether this grows, my guess is that we
should know by the end of the weekend.
Gay marriage survives - for
now. You can read my piece on yesterday's raucous session of the
constitutional convention, as well as other Phoenix coverage,
at BostonPhoenix.com. And check out the QuickTime video I shot of pro-marriage demonstrators.
posted at 2:49 PM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
